


I have put away these childish things

by imsfire



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clintasha as it might have seemed in Nat's mind, Natasha Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 23:40:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3915031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha's skills were the finest, her training incomparable, but none of it prepared her for the things you cannot talk about...</p>
            </blockquote>





	I have put away these childish things

**Author's Note:**

> With a big thank you to my noble betas, obishenshenobi and ladyk23.

“Are you proud of me?”  
“Pride is for children.” The old man’s voice is contemptuous. “What kind of nonsense is this? – why do you ask such a thing?”  
She is not even sure what had made her ask. She’s sure he is proud of her; but he never says, and she wants to know for certain. She knew even as she said it that the question would be a mistake. Even as she assessed his reaction, noting that the reply was rhetorical, and understanding that she has just betrayed how keyed-up she is today...  
He’s angry, of course. That needs to be responded to, and fast. She has been presumptuous, asking a direct question as though she were not a student but an equal of his. She backtracks swiftly, carefully making it sound clumsy, as though she is both contrite and embarrassed.  
“I only meant, does it give you pleasure, when I complete my tasks successfully?”  
“Pleasure is for children. Do not waste my time with such rubbish.”  
She lets her face fall imperceptibly; he can always read her, even now after all her training. His tone softens, an echo of kindness she identifies instantly as intended to lull. “Poor Natalia, is this still so hard for you?” He knows only too well how hard it is, just as he knows how hard she has fought to overcome it, to make herself the perfect student, the perfect creation of his programme. Now his voice chills into a lash like a blizzard “Do you think I will say I care about you?”  
“No, no of course not!” He’s struck her to the heart, and her reaction is instinctively appalled. The more so as she is shocked to realise that he is right. She’s let a flaw creep in, hiding itself in plain sight, in her desire to know that he is proud of her and her work, of her self-mastery. She does want him to care. She will fail, she will fail even at this stage, she is unworthy, she can never be good enough...  
“And why not? Why don’t we care about one another? – about anyone? Why must we never, ever allow that to happen?”  
“Because love is for children,” says Natalia Romanova. She draws herself up straight, looks him in the eye, and repeats what she knows to be true. “As it said in the holy book our grandparents held in such respect, ‘When I was a child, I thought as children do. Now I have become an adult, I have put away these childish things.’ For me, none of those things are possible. I have a job to do.”  
“That’s better,” says the chief tutor of the Red Room. “Never forget that. There can be no loyalties, none whatsoever, no personal ties of any kind. Only the job. Only your work. Only the Motherland.” He steps forward, as though about to impart some kind of paternal embrace; and slaps her hard across the face instead. His other hand comes up, fisted, aiming for her ribs, but she’s already anticipated the second blow; she meets it, grabs and twists brutally, and throws him. Her oldest and best teacher, the only one she would have liked to make proud. His white hair, his familiar blue eyes, on the training mat at her feet. She places her knee on his windpipe, applies controlled pressure, and when he raises a hand in submission she keeps her weight there a moment longer; just long enough to see a flicker of fear on his face. Only then does she free him; and the flicker turns to a cruel smile.  
“Well done,” he says, hoarsely. “Tomorrow, you will graduate.”  
********** When the SHIELD psych evaluations finally clear her to become an active field agent, and she finds who she has been assigned-to, her first thought is frustration. She had wanted to work alone, or if their nannying attitudes wouldn’t allow that, then with another woman. Not with Barton, the man who turned her and brought her in, the man whose rough kindness and sincerity shake her more inside each time they meet. It was bad enough when Coulson insisted he be one of her mentors during the long and painful process of her deprogramming and acclimatisation; but now, her field partner as well? Barton’s hair is sandy brown, not white, but his eyes are a familiar blue and it disturbs her more than she cares to admit.  
She steels herself to it anyway. To follow orders without a quiver is second nature, and it’s a matter of pride that her resolve shouldn’t be broken by something as idle as a pair of blue eyes. Barton is a good man and an excellent agent, and the finest marksman she’s ever met, bar none. She knows she’s been assigned to the best and sets out to show she’s equal to this partnership.  
Over time, she begins to tell herself that she doesn’t really notice his eyes any more. Then, that she doesn’t need to tell herself so; that she really is no longer seeing them. Just as she is no longer seeing the trust shining in them when he looks at her. Just as she is no longer seeing his wry and self-deprecating smile, his magnificent physique, his powerful hands. She narrates the story that will enable her to work, and then lives it. They are Strike Team Delta and together they are the best of the best. They do the job, and they are comrades.  
And it has been a long time since she had comrades. It feels good.  
Things change after the Budapest mission, the one where things so very nearly go wrong. She makes herself shake it off; they had completed the mission, albeit less tidily than was to be desired, and they had both survived. But Barton had been shaken, and his shock had shaken her. Barton was never shaken by anything. She had never imagined such a thing could happen.  
She goes to his room that night, in the safe house where they are lying low. Wanting to talk, wanting to reassert the bond of comradeship after this jolt of mortality brushing them both by. She finds him drinking, drinking to drunkenness; another thing she had not imagined. He tells her things she had never expected to hear, and he struggles not to cry, confessing his pride when she is better than him, his pleasure in seeing how she rises above the fear that shatters him; and his fears for her, his inability to function when he thinks her in danger. Telling her how much he cares for her. She finds herself telling him how proud she is of him, how proud to work with him, how proud he’s been her mentor and become her friend; telling him how much she cares. He raises his head, and those blue eyes gaze into hers. She finds herself holding him, cradling his head on her breast and caressing that sandy hair, stroking those mighty shoulders. Whiskey-breathed and hoarse Clint says her name in a tone of longing and bemusement.  
She kisses him.  
Afterwards, she will never be able to say who first started removing clothing, which of them it was who decided how far things would go; but she knows that it was she who made that first move. His lips were dry and warm and smoky with spirits. He was wildly drunk, and she was icy-sober, and on fire. She knows that this is something she will never forget.  
When their bodies come together she understands for the first time why people call sex “making love”. Until now all it has ever been is a tool like any other, just another weapon like her guns and her Widow’s Bite... After, she lies on her back, her arms wrapped around him as he curls into her side with a childlike snuffle of breath and falls asleep. She stares into the ceiling and feels his heartbeat, and the world rearranges itself. Even with Clint’s warm body beside her, it seems a cold and a strange place. Love is for children, and she had put away childish things, so long ago...  
When he tells her the next morning that it can’t happen again, she puts on her old role once more almost with relief. She smiles and says it’s okay, that it was a physical need, and it was healthy for them both to express it and enjoy it. She sees relief and guilt mixed in his eyes, and a certain puzzlement; and something in her realises that he knows she’s lying, and that for some reason he isn’t calling her out on it; but she tells herself that can’t be right. She is the mistress of manipulation, how could he see through her? And besides, if she dissimulates now for Clint, it’s because she wants to ease his conscience, not to control him. So it is okay, isn’t it, if she is using her training to convince him? She smiles and plays it light, and promises him that if they’ve broken any SHIELD protocols, no-one will hear about it from her.  
She narrates the story that will enable her to carry on working beside him, and then lives it.  
They last ten months, everything apparently exactly as before. Then the healthy physical need she’s told herself this is resurfaces, and there’s another night, another bed surrounded by scattered clothing, and Natasha finds herself staring into the dark and holding her lover once again. The word need, the word lover, the word Clint; the touch of those dry, warm lips on hers and the strength of the arms flung around her are more than she can comprehend. She can’t find anything to hide behind, this time. She doesn’t even know anymore. Is it just need? – an explosion like a volcano bursting into flame, a force like an earthquake, smashing through the rules? Or is it something else?  
This time, come morning, Clint says nothing, and she says nothing. But from then on, this need-that-may-be-more becomes a part of their missions; an outpouring, a celebration and consolation, the night before risking death, or the night after. For years, this is just part of how they are, Strike Team Delta, the best of the best. They never discuss it. She can no more imagine giving it up than she can imagine giving up breathing.  
Until the day comes when once more he says with shame and urgency that it can’t happen again.  
As soon as he’s spoken she realises that for months it’s been only her who initiated things; he hasn’t come to her once, only she has come to him. She hadn’t noticed; she’s let herself become secure in this nameless intimacy. Now she sees too late that Clint has been moving away.  
He’s begun seeing someone, he says. He’s been getting to know her for a while; he couldn’t imagine at first that she could be interested, this other woman. He’s only recently plucked up the courage to ask her out; and she’s said yes. He doesn’t have that great a relationship history, he says with that wry grin that’s so familiar to her now. He wants to get things right this time.  
His blue eyes are full of sincerity and affection, and absolute trust, as he says to her “Please forgive me, Nat, I should never have let this go on so long. I don’t want to lose you as a partner, but this – this thing we have – I don’t even know what it is, but it’s not anything real, is it? It’s been amazing, but it is just physical, right? We’ve always agreed that, haven’t we? – and Laura – Laura’s different. I know we’ve only just begun dating, we’re not exclusive, we’re not even going steady but if I spend the night with you again I’m gonna feel like I’m cheating on her. Nat, I think she may be the one.”  
She is the mistress of manipulation. She looks down for just a second, and puts on her role, and dissimulates again. She’s never known how to talk about it, this ‘thing that they have’; and she’s never known what it really is, either. She’s tried not to think about it too much, since the only word that seems remotely to fit is one that is poison in her mouth. She knows nothing of love, the crowning error of the things she put away so long ago.  
She always knew that she would fail, even at this stage. She would never be good enough to unlearn those lessons, rediscover those things lost. So if she has to deceive him, in order for him to be happy, she’ll do so gladly, and take what satisfaction she can in that. She lies with a smile full of warmth and tells him she understands. She agrees that ‘this thing’ has only ever been physical, and she tells him she’s thrilled he’s met someone.  
Once again, for a second she sees relief and guilt mixed in his eyes, and puzzlement. But once again he doesn’t say anything, and nor does she.

********

Over the next few months and years she hears about Laura sometimes. She knows how very glad she is that he’s managed to find someone so good for him, so good with him. Clint’s childhood was in its way almost as fucked-up as hers, and looked at dispassionately she knows it’s their damage that draws them together, as much as their skills and their professional bond. Pain in the past has made them empathetic to one another, compatible at a deep level. They will watch one another’s backs till death. But Clint has a need to make good on the wrongs done him in childhood; he wants to be a husband, and a good father, to prove he can step beyond the bad fathering he was given.  
When his and Laura’s first child is born, Nat is thrilled; and again when their little girl comes along a few years later. By then she even feels able to ask, is she ever going to meet this saint, who has helped her best friend get his feet on the ground and find regular happiness like any other dude? Clint laughs at the idea of what practical, common-sense-ical Laura would make of being called a saint. But he makes sure, soon after that, to bring his partner home and introduce her to the woman he loves.  
They get on. It’s impossible to do anything but love Laura. It makes Nat unspeakably happy to see how happy Clint is, at home, working his land and loving his family. It makes her breath stop short and her pulse shake, and her heart feel as though a hand is inside her breast, gently squeezing it each time she breathes in. She tells herself this tension is her happiness for him. It is the only emotion she will allow in this narrative.  
After all, he wanted a family, and now he has one. She would have followed him to hell’s doors and onward through them, she would have laid down her life for his, but that’s the one thing she could never have given him. She can never allow herself to be anything but grateful, for the luck and the happiness her best and dearest friend has been granted.  
Not very long after that, she is more glad of it than ever.

*********

In the heat of the battle of New York she suddenly feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. They’re standing side by side, firing steadily, shoulder to shoulder in a dusty, bloody street, and the sense of déjà-vu is so abrupt and intense it shocks her. This is how they stood in the alley above the bridge, that day in Budapest. She thought then that she was about to die, and now again she thinks it. They are both going to die, this day. Without any conscious decision to raise the subject of the day that went wrong, she says casually to him that it’s like Budapest.  
He says “You and I remember Budapest very differently.”  
Of course, she’s remembering the fight. He must be remembering all the other things. Else why would he say that? Why would he bring up that ghost? - not their brush with death, but their encounter with life?  
A horrible thought comes into her mind that evening. They’re all sitting wearily eating, in that ridiculous grill-shop Tony had insisted on visiting, and Clint suddenly puts his left boot up on her chair seat. He doesn’t even seem to think about what he’s doing. The side of his calf is against her ass, and she remembers that warmth as if it were yesterday.  
There have been other men and women since their last night together. Sometimes her work requires it, and sometimes she is simply hungry for an orgasm that someone else’s hands have made. But there’s been no-one whose touch made her want to say “lovemaking” rather than “sex”. No-one who made her want more...  
For a moment, now, for a single precious insane moment, she thinks he’s trying to signal her. The intimacy of the gesture is meant to speak, is meant to say “I want you again.” She looks at him fixedly, but he never raises his eyes from his food, and she is confused, and then angry. Then afraid. She knows that she wants him to touch her again, and she always has.  
But far from being a signal of any returning desire, this is just Clint, exhausted past thinking, trying to stretch out a calf muscle that is threatening to cramp on him. He chews on his food and groans, and says nothing to her.  
She tells herself she is resigned to this, disciplines herself to accept reality. Tells herself Clint’s happiness is a happiness to her. Tells herself never, ever again to look into that place inside where some shred of her still wants to love and be loved.  
She builds the narrative, and lives it. Love is for children.  
There’s a lot of cleaning up to do and it falls to SHIELD to do a good deal of it. But within days Clint has passed from exhaustion into a state resembling delayed shock; he seems both confused and jumpy, his temper is suddenly on a hair-trigger and he’s barely functional when asked to take on a simple task. When she asks if he’s up to this he snaps at her, and then stares as though he’s only just recognised who it is speaking. His face falls; he runs a hand into his hair and suddenly he starts to babble. “I have to be. I have to be! I can’t go home like this, I can’t, I might hurt Laura or one of the kids, I don’t know any longer what I’m capable of, Nat, you gotta understand, I’m not master of myself anymore!”  
She lets him run on till he’s said everything, and restrains the urge to take him in her arms. She’d like to kiss his hair and cradle him like a child but she knows the tenderness he needs now is not hers.  
When at last his despairing catalogue of fears is finished she says simply “I know you’ve been through hell, but I also know you’re incapable of hurting any of them. The best thing you can do to help yourself heal from this is to be with them now and know that for yourself.”  
“But what if I fuck up?”  
“You won’t. It makes sense that you’re in shock, you’ve had a traumatic experience, but maybe you need to be with the people who love you now. You’re going to have to face this sooner or later, after all. Wouldn’t you rather it was sooner? You want to always be there for them. So now let them be there for you.”  
She never mentions her own love for him, only the love she knows he needs and wants and fears for. She’s plain-spoken, a touch brisk. He’s so lost without someone to support him at the moment; until she can get him to the support he needs, she’ll be the strong one for them both. She tells him again, gently and firmly, that he needs to go home.  
He sighs, rakes at his hair as though to uproot it, and admits she’s right. She gets him to sign-off sick, and takes him back to Iowa. Watches as he trudges across the field towards his home, a weary figure with slumped shoulders, kitbag trailing. A figure emerges from the farmhouse, hesitates, then runs to him; she sees his head come up, his whole posture change. He drops the kitbag and takes Laura in his arms, and buries his face in her dark hair.  
Nat heads back to New York and the clean-up. 

**********

Over the next couple of years it becomes increasingly clear that someone needs to learn how to manage the Hulk. Natasha is terrified of the monster, one of the few living creatures she’s never had any confidence of beating. Every fighting method, every trick she’s ever used, depends on engaging her opponent’s mind as well as their body, and the Hulk is mindless, pure animal rage, nothing to engage with at all, only absolute violence. It’s all the more strange when you think that, talking to Banner, one is dealing with a mind of unusual intellect; engage with that, and it’s plain sailing. If she had to seduce Banner and control him, she could do it standing on her head, blindfold and in a darkened room.  
Facing her fears is such a normal thing these days that she volunteers to work with him as soon as the idea is mentioned. There’s a real tactical need to develop some kind of ‘calm-Hulk’ technique. And as long as she’s working with Banner, not Hulk, it’s even quite pleasant going. It’s slightly surreal, too, discussing with this erudite, gentle man how to trick his own alter ego, what might work on him and what will not. They form hypotheses, and eventually they have to test them. Their experiments are as controlled as can be managed, given that the test subject is Hulk rather than Banner; the process is fairly uncomfortable for both parties. But they make progress, and the experience brings the two of them a little closer. In the end they have a system that seems to work about 80% of the time. It’s more than Banner has ever known with anyone; even, he tells her with emotion, with Betty, the woman he left behind.  
So even love could not tame the beast the way her mastery can.  
She’s faced her fear, and like something in a lucid dream it has turned, and given her power over it.  
She begins to wonder what it would be like, to let herself get closer to someone she has power over like this. Banner needs her, now; no-one has ever needed her since Clint. She’d be in control of this, she could stop it the moment she needed to. But it might be a shadow, even maybe more than a shadow, of the openness and intimacy she once knew.  
She tells herself it would not be the same, that there is a reason why she put such things away again. She elects to ignore the puzzled way that Banner looks at her sometimes, the way he seems to move halfway into trusting her and then pull back, time and again. They’ve sorted out a working solution, and jokingly they christen it the Lullaby Routine. That’s all they had ever intended to do.  
The efficacy of the Lullaby Routine pays off, time and again. Things are tough, then tougher, but the old team stick together. Times change, the world changes, old friends depart and new ones come, and SHIELD is broken, just like the old Soviet system that raised her.  
About a year after the fall of SHIELD, she feels safe enough to pay Clint and Laura and the kids a visit. She’s been on the move, watching her back, and she’s sure now that no-one has managed to tail her. Not even that other old Soviet creation, that freak like herself, Cap’s old friend Bucky. Whatever he’s doing now, it isn’t following Natasha. She suspects he’s gone to ground. So long as he’s not putting himself in her picture, she’s content to let him go. He’s someone else’s problem, anyway.  
When she arrives at the farm, she finds another guest has preceded her. Clint is preparing to plant winter wheat, and there with him in the barn, helping clean the cumbersome 1950’s seed drill he’s bought at god-knows-what auction of outmoded equipment, is a lean, dark figure with one eye covered. Fury laughs at the sight of her and says he knew she’d turn up there soon, and he’ll have a chat with her later. Clint beams at her over the tractor’s hook-up and says it’s good to see her, but he doesn’t leave his work.  
When she goes into the house, Laura and the kids embrace her like a long-lost relative. For a tiny fraction of a second she thinks she might cry; but it is unallowable, and she puts the idea from her, unadmitted, and lives the narrative of what must be, as she’s done for so long.  
That evening, after a leisurely kitchen supper and half an hour helping wash dishes and pretend she really is Aunty Nat, she slips out, following Fury back to the barn for the chat he had promised. As she suspected, it’s complicated. He has a mission for her.  
It does her good to be needed again. There’s a huge peace in this quiet place, among the green hills and the morning and evening mists, but less than a day here and she knows that this peace is not for her. She knows it has healed Clint, and once she would have shed her heart’s blood to have been able to give him what he’s gained from this secret life. But this too she has put away, and she will not dwell on things past. She sits in the lamplit barn and listens to the ex-director of SHIELD as he outlines the situation.

**********

Covert and independent now, operating from the Stark Tower like some weird outreach project of Tony’s industrial empire, the team go on with their work. Natasha plays her part as she has always done; but at the same time she is shaping her next moves. Fury’s mission requires the long play, a careful laying of plans and sowing of seeds, and it’s going to need a fall-back if things go wrong. She won’t need a rescuer, that’s one thing she’s confident of; but she may need back-up, and she may need a distraction. A big distraction. From everything she’s been told, this business with the Inhumans is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, or at least less dangerous. And she is not looking forward to tangling with Bobbi Morse again either. The mess there isn’t going to be easily fixed; is possibly even worse than the mess around the Inhumans. But she’s got a mission; she has targets to extract, and information to locate. She needs focus and time, and to get it right from the get-go. And she needs that back-up plan.  
It’s a shame, but she has to admit it; Banner, if she can win him round, would be the perfect candidate. He’d back any of the team to the hilt; he has the brain power to be useful as well as supportive, and Hulk is about as big a distraction as can be found anywhere.  
She feels mean doing it; Banner is a nice guy, too bookish perhaps and hopeless about women, but essentially kind and decent. She would almost like to be able to pretend this was real, as she had toyed with doing a while back. She has to play it very subtly, since every one of the others has at one time or another seen her using her techniques for work. They all know what an impressive flirt she can be when the job requires it.  
She makes herself as awkward as she knows; the exact opposite of her usual polish, her usual glamorous performance. Makes herself act like a bashful teen in a bad novel. And for a time, she thinks it’s working; but in the end, something doesn’t click. In the end, though she can kiss her kind-hearted friend on the mouth with every gram of her training, she can’t bring herself to say the words that might swing it; “I love you”. The best she can manage is “I adore you” and it sounds as though he’s a puppy, not a man. It’s a good thing they’re knee deep in war by then, since for a moment she feels sick to the stomach at what she’s doing, and if Banner weren’t already going green he’d probably splutter and expostulate, trying to call her out without being angry with her...  
At the end of the fight, with a victory more scanty and bitter than usual, just barely clawed back from disaster, he runs.  
She still has her mission, and now the safety net she’s been trying to weave is torn apart. She’s built plans on the basis of having that back-up. She’s not sure if Banner is running from what he’s become, or from her, or from both. She wonders whether, if she ever met Betty Ross, they would find themselves comparing notes and seeing similar stories; perhaps Bruce is not just a troubled monster but a commitment-phobic one, too. But she still has a mission to do, and no time to spare.  
She can think of only one other person who might be willing to help her with this job.  
********* It’s late afternoon, long shadows falling on the green fields of corn, when she arrives at the farm. She knows Clint got back a few days ago, just in time to be there for the birth of his second son. It feels mean to show up right now; but recent events have just added to the urgency of the task Fury gave her. And Clint can always say no to her.  
She hopes he will not.  
She explains everything as concisely as possible. He knows her well enough that she doesn’t expect to pull his strings emotionally. He’ll come, or not come, on the merits of the case she sets out before him, and nothing else.  
When she’s finished, he’s silent for a minute. He’s been working on another of his endless home improvement projects and when she began he’d set down the hand drill he was using on the floor beside him. His hands stray back to it for a moment, as if he wants to resume work. Then he gets up, goes to the wall, unplugs it; he winds up the cable and takes out the drill bit, and puts the whole thing neatly to one side.  
He looks at Natasha, expressionless for a moment.  
“You know you’re my best friend, right?” he says. She nods, unable to do more for a second than just acknowledge the familiar truth of the words.  
“Why didn’t you come to me straight away?”  
“I can’t take you from your family like that.”  
“Hell, ‘Tasha, stuff takes me from my family every fucking week it seems like. You know Laura. She’s cool with it, she knows what she married. The kids’ve never known anything else. So that’s not an excuse to try and cut your best friend out when you’re planning something this dangerous. Don’t you trust me to have your back anymore, is that it?”  
“Clint, I would trust you to the gates of death, I trust you more than I trust myself. It isn’t about trust, I swear. But I don’t have the right to ask you to do this.”  
“Yes, you do.”  
“No. No, I don’t. I don’t have the right to ask anyone to help me or to stand by me. I was wrong trying to pull Bruce into this. It’s only what I deserve, to have that backfire on me. I messed up, Clint.”  
There is a pause, and then he chuckles gently. “You know, Laura’s gonna be so pissed about that. She really thought there was something serious going on between you two. I’ve had her teasing me, saying I can’t see the nose on my face. Now I’m gonna have to tell her it was all an act.”  
For some reason the idea of him breaking the news to Laura hurts her. “No, don’t tell her, not just yet. I don’t want her thinking I lied to her. That would be like lying to you.”  
“And you’ve never done that, right?”  
He’s being amused and cynical, trying to lighten the situation, but the remark is so close to the heart of things that she flinches for a moment, and can’t go on. Finally she says simply “Yes, Clint. I’ve lied to you. I’ve lied to everyone, some time or another. But I’ve only ever lied to you for good reasons; truly good reasons, the very best. Please don’t ask me about it now.”  
She sees him frown; wants to stroke away the crinkle of confusion and displeasure from his brow. Does not move a muscle, since it is not and now never will be her place to give him that loving touch. Only, after a moment, she looks away, so that she won’t have to keep meeting those familiar eyes and still hiding from them.  
Then he says “I guess I don’t really need to ask...”  
Natasha looks back, startled, and he’s looking into her face.  
“I guess I have a pretty good idea,” he says. “I guess it’s just another of these things we don’t talk about, yeah?”  
Natasha swallows involuntarily. It appals her to be so wide open to anyone. Every scrap of her training was designed to enable her to be the opposite. To trust someone this much is a vulnerability she’s been trying never to admit. But this is Clint, the one person she knows she can always read; so it’s a poetic justice that he can read her, too.  
She can’t deny him an answer.  
“I guess it is, yes.”  
“Are you gonna tell me about it now?”  
“No, no I’m not. Like I just said. Please don’t ask me.” He compresses his lips and looks down. It’s been more than ten years that this subject has gone undiscussed, though, and now is not the time. “I couldn’t bear for Laura to think badly of me,” Nat says. “She could have resented me, us, your work, all of it, she could have resented it so much. Sooner or later there’s going to come a day when I lose her faith and she doesn’t trust me not to bring you back in a body bag. Please let me keep that day a long way off. Please let her go on trusting me a bit longer.”  
There is a pause; Clint sits on the floor, looking coolly up at her as she stands in the doorway of the half-finished room. He’s got sawdust in his hair and paint under his fingernails. There are shadows under his eyes and he’s wearing a frayed grey teeshirt that sculpts every inch of his torso. He’s perfect, he’s a mess, and he’s her dearest friend. She cannot bear to lose him; she will lose him if she loses Laura’s friendship; she cannot bear to lose that, either.  
He says “Laura trusts you. You know that she trusts you.”  
“I also know that she shouldn’t.”  
“Ah.” He looks away for a second and begins to pick at the half-sanded surface of the floorboards.  
“I don’t deserve it. Here I am again, coming to take you away – if you’re willing, if you’ll come” –  
“There’s no ‘if’ about it” –  
“Are you sure?”  
He’s still looking down, and his voice is low. “Tasha, you’re my partner and my best friend. You know I’ll follow you through anything. I’ve got your back. I know you’ve got mine. Laura isn’t the only one who trusts you. I don’t think I’ve ever had as much faith in another human being as I have in you. I know you, like you’re me too. You and I, we - we go together.” He looks up and meets her eye. “We always have. Whether we talk about it or not.”  
It’s as close to an admittance as she’d ever dreamed of hearing from his lips. Her own lips would like to shake, but she masters them. Only when she speaks she says a little wildly “This could be a dangerous job, we’ll be alone, off-grid, no back-up...”  
Clint starts to grin. “Just the way I like it. So, when do we start?”


End file.
